Shawn DeWolfe - rapehttps://shawn.dewolfe.ca/taxonomy/term/84
enShow Me Your Boobshttps://shawn.dewolfe.ca/blog/show-me-your-boobs
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<tr><td valign="top" class="left"><p>Get a friend request. Say ‘Yes.’ Five minutes later, you are bombarded with, “I’ve had a bad day…. Show me your tits.” This goes from one request for boobs to an onslaught of begging and pleading. This isn’t an isolated situation.</p>
<p>Of the many people this happened to, this happened to a friend. She will get friend requests followed by a heavy press for some sort of sexual interaction. These are guys from all over the world (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the US, Canada-- many nations are putting their best creeps forward). She will toy with them, challenge them and berate them. In some cases, she sends back screencaps of gay sex knowing guy-on-guy action is the bane of their existence.</p>
<p>I watched this phenomenon as it played out in her Facebook feed. I started to ask some deeper questions: What’s really going on here? Why is she being asked to show her boobs? Am I a part of this problem?</p>
<h3>What’s Going On Here?</h3>
<p>Sex is all over the Internet. My aforementioned friend is very beautiful. There are types of women that a guy will go for. If someone had a penchance for gothy chesty brunettes who were in the 5’6” range, with the aid of Google, they could find all of the photos and video they’d want inside of 15 minutes. Between Tumblr, Fetlfe and Pornhub, a sorry soul wouldn’t even have to pay for it. Women, desperate to show off and get noticed at any cost, will post all sorts of material just for the brownie points of being lurid. </p>
<p>While sex sells, giving it away creates a profound impact on the price of sex. By a weird quirk, this easy access to any type of nudity and kink has caused sources of non-Internet porn to wither. The number of XXX video stores and magazine shops is down to almost nil. Playboy realized that sex wasn’t selling their magazines and stopped their centerfolds. On the Internet, you can pay for the really good stuff, but the free bin has plenty to trawl through. </p>
<p>In short: no one who wants porn needs to go without.</p>
<h3>Why Show Your Boobs?</h3>
<p>With the ubiquity of porn, you’d think no one would say “show me your boobs” to a random stranger. It’s not about the boobs.</p>
<p>I watched as Cory Cook pleaded with my friend. As an aside: pleading isn’t sexy. Cory (cory.cook.1848 ?) didn't need to see boobs. His plea following a bad day lays bare exactly what he was looking for. He needed power and control that he didn’t have in real life. Cory was looking to exert his power over a woman he doesn't know on the Internet. That exertion of power and unequal exchange in a sexual context is the cornerstone of rape.</p>
<p>There is a fallacy that only pretty girls get raped. I actually have heard women on a few occasions say something to the effect of “I’m pretty, so I’m at risk of sexual assault.” I’m blockaded from engaging on that statement because to engage would diminish their fear of sexual assault or ask them to reconsider they were, indeed, pretty. But given how many women are sexually assaulted and why sexual assaults happen, it’s clear that not just the pretty ones are getting targeted. If pretty women and the homely ones alike are put in the crosshairs for sexual aggression, this isn’t about sex. It’s not about my friend’s body. It couldn’t be about sex because a picture of boobs is not an actual woman. The best you could consider is that the pictures are fodder for masturbation. If that were the case, then Cory lacks both imagination and a woman. If he needs material to work from, then the Internet has lots of porn. He needed to convince her to yield.</p>
<p>Sexual assault has a number of components. There is the sexual context that packs along a lot of guilt and societal baggage along. There is the tangible fear of harm for non-compliance. There is the exertion of force through physical, economic and/or psychological means. Even if you take out one of these ingredients, there is still enough to create a life altering episode. All Cory lacked was the physicality to carry out present harm, but he was using coercion and nagging to an epic degree to get a picture of my friend’s boobs. While it may have worked on someone who was less self aware or had less self-esteem, this is not about a victim’s capacity for defense, it’s about the one carrying out the assault. </p>
<h3>Am I A Part Of This Problem?</h3>
<p>I spend a lot of time on the Internet. I like women. Porn can be swell. I have asked for nudes. When I saw this full court press for pictures of boobs, I did pause and think, “oh, Jesus: I’m just like this guy.”</p>
<p>I considered my online interactions. I won’t apologize for liking women and having quite a lot of pervy daydreams. It’s how I’m wired. The “lights” as it were went on early. I joke that I think I learned to walk as a toddler because walking let me cover more ground in my search for women. Porn can be swell. When I step back just a bit and it’s not hard to get analytic and meta about it. If I like women, porn diminishes my exposure to actual women (I only have so many hours in a day), so porn runs counter to what drives me. So: porn only gets a little bit of my mental bandwidth.</p>
<p>When I get to topic of “can I see your boobs?” Yep: I have asked for nudes. But the very big differentiator is this: I didn’t ask for nudes for the sake of control and getting some complicity. I asked as the evolution of racy discussions and as something like an appetizer for what was imminent. If I were to get a “no” I wouldn’t plead or beg. It probably says something that I never got a “no” because those requests have been seldom and I was in safe enough territory that it seemed like it wasn’t a stretch to take the conversation there. In a couple instances, I was sent racy photos and unsolicited nudes. I didn’t protest, but I took a photo to be a photo. A photo is never a “you can do anything to me”</p>
<p>Somewhere in the mix, keyboard courage is in play. Whether a woman is hiding in a basement desperate to be noticed; or a man who’s second statement is “show me your boobs,” the one thing you can pin on the Internet is its capacity for anonymity and unilateral action. It has turned interactions from a real quid pro quo between people to this new exchange dynamic that we haven’t grasped. When I talk with a real, non-condensed, non-digital person, the experience is special. The time, the place, the person and where we are in our lives: they’re all variable that are nearly unique. With online interactions, the Internet lets you bottle and capture distill life into a digital simulation of that interaction. There’s an off switch which doesn’t exist in reality. Unfriending and unfollowing are easy remedies for discomfort. Imagine being at a family reunion and Uncle Carl is annoying, so you “block” him in real life? That can’t happen, we have to negotiate the messy aftermath of being human.</p>
<p>Online, there is no messy aftermath that can’t be resolved with a delete function. Really: this piece is accompanied by screengrabs of Cory perving on my friend. If she had blocked him after seeing “boobs.,” there would have been no exposure. If she had deleted the thread, it would have been lost in the past as though it didn’t exist. If I delete this post, all of Cory’s attempt to emotionally extort nudes would vanish. Maybe the convenience of online life is what’s making the drive by assaults easy to carry out?</p>
<p>What do you think?</p>
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</style></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/129">Sex</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/160">Internet</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/84">rape</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/19">Social Media</a></div></div></div>Sat, 15 Apr 2017 06:08:08 +0000Shawn DeWolfe195 at https://shawn.dewolfe.caDick, Dick, Dick, Dick, Dick, Dick.... Dick!https://shawn.dewolfe.ca/blog/dick-dick-dick.html
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Running through the back of my head all week (thanks to events surrounding CBC’s personality / date rapist, Jian Ghomeshi) has been the opening sequence from Reservoir Dogs and Quentin Tarrantino’s rant about Madonna and Like A Virgin. He theorizes that Like A Virgin is about pain, pain like the first time. Hence: Like A Virgin.<br/>
<iframe width="600" height="320" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/J782jBp_pW0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Pain, permissiveness, permission and pelvises has been in a swirl this week. It’s had me thinking about a number of topics and how they tie together. <br/><br/>
Start close to home. One local character is a vocal swinger. He equates monogamy with bigotry as an example of yet another bad practice that will die in generations to come. His party trick is to try to fuck anyone. Have a house party and this little nerd shows up to fuck the hostess. Were she to say, ‘no’, well: what’s her problem? Maybe she has standards. Maybe she has intact persona that includes her marriage vows being something sacred. Maybe none of those matter because no means no, and knocking on every door to get a ‘yes’ is just a shade better than foregoing the permission check. This little weasel is a wouldbe security expert and I swear he’s mapping his security tactics to hook-ups: socially port scanning for exploits, vulnerabilities and vaginas. If you look at the Ghomeshi thing, he scaffolded from a ledge of permission (eg. “let’s go for drinks” all the way to, “you’re lucky to have me punch you in the face”). Looking for a lack of ‘no’ by trying everything everywhere is in the same ballpark. <br/><br/>
A dear Facebook friend had this to say from the other day:<br/><br/>
<em>“Buses are so sketchy. Like the creepiest guy asking me where I lived and worked .., if I lived alone. Like gross.” </em><br/><br/>
We actually had dinner moments after this happened. I was amazed and annoyed but not surprised. He kept on her for two bus rides, changing buses luckily as she did. Likely he’ll be on her bus again. This is not uncommon-- far from it. Men do this all the time. They’ll hit on anything and everything. That ringing on every doorbell is crazy making. It actually makes me not engage with women in public; and it leaves me reluctant to initiate conversations. That’s not out of shyness or fear, save the fear that I will be mistaken as yet another freak. My ego is intact enough to know that is not the case (well, I’m not *that* kind of a freak), but the general false positives from women who are allergic to the BS; that’s not the validation I seek from society. The net effect: minimal engagement. Minimal chance that I get mistaken for yet another freak with no game who is hitting on a woman. I basically take a bullet for half of the human species as my little way of saying, “They’re stupid and I can’t abide by that, but let me take the pressure off by not saying anything at all and just providing a friendly smile as I acknowledge you and move on with my life.” That means that I miss the chance to talk to a lot of people. In addition to those nice women who could carry on a good conversation, I’ll steer wide of the dorks who act like dogs chasing cars. I will sometimes jump that divide when I think, “I bet I’m not going to be mistaken for a jerk” but that is an uncommon situation. More on this from Shapely Prose: <a href="http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-schrodinger%E2%80%99s-rapist-or-a-guy%E2%80%99s-guide-to-approaching-strange-women-without-being-maced/">http://kateharding.net/...guide-to-approaching-strange-women-without-being-maced/</a><br/><br/>
I had a difficult friend (I’ve actually have a few of those). When we went to the bar, he would hit on every woman he could get to. If they were hot, he’d annoy them with the aim of nailing them. If they were not hot, he would annoy them with the goal of getting them to bugger off entirely. It wasn’t long before I learned to not be associated with him. More than once, I asked, “Do you have to piss in every pool?” as I reeled from trial and guilt by association. <br/><br/>
These guys with their bad form make it hard for the few out there who know better and behave well, acting with respect for the humans including and especially the desirable ones. The bad actors actually have some success with their ego, their brazen lines, jack-ass behaviour, bus-bound creeping and hostess humping. I have heard women regret the bad hook-ups after the fact, wherein their defenses were worn down. They’ll sleep with a guy, “just to get him off their case.” Sadly, that is sometimes the only tactic that brings about a conclusion. Hounding and coercion have been mistaken for viable tactics. It’s so much the case that Canada’s newfound serial rapist is getting legions of supporters who want to say, “let’s not rush to judgement.” and “it’s easy to make these anonymous accusations.” The median is this siege approach by men, so an outlier who hurts women no longer lies too far out any more. Many want that median pushed further in their favour, applying deregulation to sexuality so that the market can decide what’s right and what’s wrong instead of leaving this to the comfort of individuals. It means that we, as a society, could slide toward more discounting of women and give up on the necessity of making their choice absolute in what happens to them. It could mean we get more prudish and quick to make “no means no” such an all-encompassing sentiment that sex happens only after a visit to a notary’s office. The potential fallout feels like it’s blowing in the wrong direction and this could cause polarization, closeting and a retrograde in our social advances. We are not taking an opportunity to make a healthier sexual climate. That still needs to happen even if it’s easier to take the simple approach of more prudes and more secretive but unqualified leniency.<br/><br/>
This pull towards giving a serial rapist all due respect and consideration diminishes us as a whole. Yes: there is “innocent before proven guilty” from the legal system, but the legal system is not a system fixated on justice or fairness. If anything, the legal system is stacked to rebuff sexual assault victims. Six percent of victims go to police. Many fewer get their day in court and fewer still see the rapist go to job. It’s stats like that, that encourage serial rapists. Russian Roulette puts a bullet in one of six chambers. A rapist conviction feels as likely as being hit by lightning. It means that you have to be over-protective. There are no protections in place to stymie bad behaviour. That chokes off all of us. The only thing that could make this worse are the rape apologists who equate adequate use of a microphone with being a good person. <br/><br/>
I think rape is the only crime that should have the death penalty attached to it. I feel that strongly about it (skip the list for the “why” on that mindset).<br/><br/>
To the women who are rape apologists I say these things:
<ol>
<li>You're an enemy to your half of the species and you're not a friend of my half, either. I know countless women who have been raped and when they go to someone they trust to confide in them, they get something to the effect of "are you sure you were raped?" or some other statement of disbelief and discount.</li>
<li>I am livid that rapists are allowed to walk to the Earth, but I wish their apologists would do us all a favour and walk into traffic. If you are an apologist for Jian Ghomeshi, I am disappointed that you exist.</li>
<li>A study in Asia uncovered that 23% of men have committed a sexual assault. Out of 2 billion people, 230 MILLION of them are rapists. That’s a rape nation. [UN Study: <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/09/130914-rape-asia-pacific-un-men-violence-women/">http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/09/130914-rape-asia-pacific-un-men-violence-women/</a>]. Seeing that number makes me cave in. Take that number and extrapolate it to daily life: half of the guys on the back half of the bus are rapists. Every fourth man making an order at a Malaysia McDonalds is a rapist. I’m not loving it. With stats like that, no woman is overreacting to the likelihood of the threat turning into reality. If one in four men were intent on eventually punching me in the face, I would always wear a hockey mask. I would be perpetually prepared to lash out. What a horrible cultural dynamic.</li>
<li>The Ghomeshi thing is masked as BDSM, but it truth, he’s a serial rapist who peddled his fame into opportunity. His violence and coercion in a sexual context or for his sexual gratification makes many of his actions sexual assault.</li>
<li>If a woman is an apologist for Ghomeshi, I want them to turn to a random woman and have the courage to say, “rape is just fine.” The chances are high that they will be talking to a rape victim who has kept her mouth shut all these years. If you are an apologist, have the courage to say that the attack or attacks on them in past that haunted them and changed them are good things. As an apologist, that is your projected viewpoint, but it is absolutely not mine. </li>
</ol>
When you strip all of the layers away, living creatures are baby machines. Science has proven that time and again. It’s why sex consumes us. It’s why we have weddings to prep couples to have conditions conducive to child rearing. For some species, sex is a mortal act and they die shortly after reproducing. There was a recent story of a python that had a virgin birth of 60 eggs-- little clones of her. Life is pernicious-- even when there is no mating to be had, life still finds a way. Commonly, life persists through sex. When a woman is raped, that intrinsic part of being alive is fractured. We live with the five senses. Beneath those are sensibilities. When in tune, they guide us as keenly as vision or hearing. Rape is an assault on those sensibilities. Yeah: “it’s just sex.” and “it’s just a closed fist punch by a celebrity.” It’s much more. This feels like what is up with BDSM. On the surface it has malign trapping: bindings, humiliation, and the like. Kink has picked up a lot of respect in the last few years, so anyone who jumps on board is jumping into friendlier waters even if they come with some malicious intent. Violence and denigration can be at the core of your sexual practices, but it can still look like rape. It can be pleasurable to some people, but not everyone. Bad actors mask their behavior as a personal preference, when it is really a practice meant to strip something away from someone else for their own satisfaction.<br/><br/>
The real meter of sexual liberation and sexual plurality is whether or not we can accept asexuals, pansexuals and a lot of plain folk-- and that we can celebrate all of them for their capacity to find what makes them happy. We can be okay that people’s kinks are what they are and that having no kinks is good too. <br/><br/>
More sobering stats. Canadian: <a href="http://www.sexassault.ca/statistics.htm and this study, used to make the graphic I shared this morning: http://ywcacanada.ca/data/research_docs/00000308.pdf ">http://www.sexassault.ca/statistics.htm and this study, used to make the graphic I shared this morning: http://ywcacanada.ca/data/research_docs/00000308.pdf</a> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/84">rape</a></div></div></div>Fri, 31 Oct 2014 02:49:51 +0000Shawn DeWolfe113 at https://shawn.dewolfe.ca